Land of vendetta

HERAKLION, Greece — “Right between the eyes.” Pushing two fingers into the centre of his forehead to make his point, Marinos cocks his shotgun and fires. The blast explodes through the air. My body jolts. “That’s what I’d give Merkel,” he says with a broad smile.

Crete is Greece’s largest island. Home to around 620,000 people, it has given birth to the Minoan civilization, ancient music and poetry — and vendetta. For centuries, people here have worked the fields in a burning sun more African than European, they have herded sheep through mountainous countryside, and they have very, very long memories.

* * *

I arrive in Heraklion, Crete’s capital city. It looks like any other Greek tourist trap. The streets buzz with holidaymakers on rented scooters. Shops are stocked with buckets and spades, beach bats and balls. Bottles of plastic water are piled high and sell quickly.

Crete is where urban and rural Greece meet. The division between town and country is a vital part of the story of Crisis Greece. Such is the scale of local agriculture that Crete is one of only a handful of islands that could be almost entirely self-sufficient — even without tourism. A valuable ability when financial catastrophe could be only days away. Cretans are stubborn. And they pride themselves on their defiance. During the recent July 6 referendum the highest No vote (with 73.27 percent) in the whole of the country was recorded on Crete (in Chania, the island’s second largest city). I am here to find out why.

That evening I take a stroll around Heraklion. It’s the weekend and revellers are out in force, eating, drinking and laughing in the streets. I catch snatches of Russian, German and American-accented English. I go to Lion Square, one of the town’s main squares. Things look good. The “Veranda All Day Café and Restaurant” is filled with people. But the designer clothes and handbag shops around the city center all have “Sale” signs. “Everything 15-30 euros” reads one. “Special offers” reads another. As everywhere else in Greece things seem to be carrying on usual, but look just slightly harder and the crisis is everywhere.

As I return back to my hotel I walk past The Gusto All Day Café. Tracy Chapman is playing on the sound system; “Talkin’ About a Revolution,” she softly sings.

* * *

“We have too much civilization here; too much Europe; too much everything,” says Georgos Chatzidakis, dismissing my concerns as he lights up a cigarette next to the “No smoking” sign in my hotel’s reception area the following day. Georgos is a native of Crete, and in a society that functions almost entirely on kinship ties and close friendships he is to be my guide as I venture inland — to rural Crete, where, as he puts it, the “true spirit” of the island resides. Without someone like Georgos, no one inland will speak to me, not least of all because I’m writing for a Brussels-based newspaper — whose website ends in .eu, no less.

Georgos is a language teacher, but like almost all Cretans also farms the land. Together with his wife, he owns about 350 olive trees, which he harvests each year. The plan is to go inland in Georgos’ Agrotiko, a small truck with an open back for transporting goods — usually natural produce — that almost all Cretans own. We fill up the truck with iced water. The heat is intense. “Thank god there’s a breeze today,” says Georgos. “Otherwise it would be unbearable.”

“Crete is where urban and rural Greece meet” | David Patrikarakos

We drive out of the city. The landscape becomes gradually more arid. The hills and mountains are covered in olive bushes and grape vines. Tractors and Agrotika drive through fields on either side of the road. We pass a small church in a field — a private church, Georgos explains. “In Crete, if you have health or family problems you’ll go and hang some gold or silver on an icon. If it’s really serious you’ll build your own church. Sometimes people do it in memory of people that die. So many people die every year on the roads.”

“People in Crete never learn,” he sighs, as he roars around a sharp bend.

We are now winding through the Cretan mountains. The landscape spreads out beneath us. The road is littered with smashed watermelons. We dodge a dead cat splayed across the road.

Georgos starts to give me his take on Greece’s creditors. “Over 1,000 Cretan villages were destroyed by the Germans during the war,” he says, using one hand to steer the truck and another to light a cigarette. “Then of course there’s the famous occupation ‘loan’ the Germans forced the Greek government to give them. They took 90 percent of Greece’s gold reserves — all this to feed their troops.”

“I think certain people should keep a lower profile when pointing the finger,” he continues. “1,000 villages — wiped off the map. Skeletons of hundreds of children found. I think we should put all of this in an album and send it to [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schäuble for his birthday.”

* * *

We arrive in Matala, home to a famous series of caves that in the 1970s were filled with hippies from across Europe who came there to party. I sit on the deck at café Zafiria. On a beach, just meters away, tourists swim and sunbathe — it’s Greece at its best.

Matala, where the crisis has hit, but tourism has helped to dull some of its impact | David Patrikarakos

As I am about to discover: In this country, the further you get from the cities the better off the people are. Here, the crisis has hit, but tourism has helped to dull some of its impact. I meet Heracles Molosis, a 57-year-old who manages two hotels in the town. He wears a red and blue sports T-shirt and red shorts. “For the moment things are ok — there isn’t a real problem. I have French guests, and the French love Greece.” Everybody loves Greece, I interject. “Not the Germans,” he replies.

Molosis voted No in the recent referendum and is one of the few people I’ve met who feels relaxed about the prospect of Greece leaving the eurozone. “Although we can’t discount the possibility of things getting worse generally, leaving the eurozone might even be better for me,” he says. “Greece would be a cheaper destination for tourists.”

We say our goodbyes and get on the road to the village of Meghali Vrisi. I am now entering the land of vendettas and sheep theft. “People are always stealing each other’s sheep,” Georgos cheerfully informs me. “What will happen is that someone will steal some sheep and then a local bigwig — someone seen as neutral and, critically, respected by both sides — will step in to mediate. It’s been going on for centuries.”

The landscape is even more arid. Cacti have sprouted up in the fields. We pass Mount Psiloritis, the highest mountain in Crete. “Up there was the Battle of Trahili,” say Georgos. “The local resistance, only about 50 or 60 men, fought an entire division of the German army — and they were winning. But at night someone betrayed them; they told the Germans about a path up into the mountain. The Germans surrounded the fighters and they fought literally back to back. Somehow they were able to escape under cover of darkness.”

“This land has produced many great heroes,” he says wistfully. “But also a few great traitors.”

* * *

We are now deep inland. We pass the Salty Virgin Mary Monastery. The heat and humidity have become thick and sticky. In the distance wind turbines turn slowly in the life-saving breeze. As we near the village Georgos is keen to set out some ground rules. “If you see a woman on the street don’t call out to her or anything,” he says. “We don’t want any trouble. And you don’t want to have to get married.”

We drive into Meghali Vrisi and pull up outside a house where Georgos has arranged a meeting with some local farmers to whom he is related. As we enter the house I experience the full warmth of Cretan hospitality. An elderly grandma gives me a kiss on the lips and as we all sit down the food is brought out. Plates of cucumbers, lamb, snails, cheese, olives and tomatoes cover the table.

“Don’t take a photo of all the food!” shouts a man. “We’ll end up with more austerity!”

What would you say to Angela Merkel if she were here right now? I ask. “Nothing,” he replies. “I would spit in her face.”

And then out comes the raki. The men each take a shot glass, toast and drink. The glasses are refilled. More food is eaten. The glasses are filled once again. A woman tells me her daughter got married 15 days earlier and gives me a small basket filled with sweets. She asks if I am married and, when she finds out I am not, promptly spoons honey into my mouth to “sweeten my attitude towards matrimony.”

A tractor driven by a 12-year-old boy drives past us up the road. A man on a horse arrives.

I sit across the table from four farmers. All are dressed in traditional Cretan black shirts. Two are wearing white embroidered shawls around their neck and shoulders. At 53, Georgos Selioniotakis is the eldest, so I start with him. He has experienced hard times, he tells me, and was forced to sell one of his fields at 50 percent of its value. He voted No — as everyone at the table did — in the recent referendum because he had nothing to lose: He has no money deposited in the bank. “What Hitler didn’t manage to do through the use of force, Merkel is trying to do through the use of finance,” he tells me.

For Cretans, it all comes back to World War II. From the monuments to Cretan resistance to the German war cemeteries, the war has left an indelible mark on the island. Nazi Germany occupied Crete from 1941-1943, and the Battle of Crete, which began on May 20, 1941, is a famous part of Greek folklore. After Greece repulsed initial Italian attacks against the country, the Germans intervened and attacked the island. But the Wehrmacht faced stronger resistance from the local population that it had hitherto experienced. As the Fallschirmjäger, the German paratroopers, parachuted onto the island, the Cretans, armed with single shot rifles, blasted them out of the sky in their hundreds. The battle lasted for ten days and held up the German advance eastwards. The Cretans were eventually defeated, but continued to resist their occupiers, who retaliated in brutal fashion, often massacring entire villages in response to the killing of a single German soldier.

I turn to Marinos Michelakis, 43, who is also a farmer. What would you say to Angela Merkel if she were here right now? I ask. “Nothing,” he replies. “I would spit in her face.”

Is Greece in an economic war with Germany? I ask. “Yes,” he replies without hesitation. “The German government hates Greece because of the events of 1941-1943. Germany, Schäuble in particular, has a vindictive rage against our country, especially Crete, because his father was one of the Nazis killed in the Battle of Maleme Airport.” Schäuble’s father’s grave, he insists, is in the German cemetery here on Crete. (Karl Schäuble died in Germany in 2000.)

The Cretans may dislike Merkel. But they really hate Schäuble.

The way I see things, overall it might be best to leave the eurozone and go back to the drachma.

Michelakis has also suffered during the crisis. But he is self-sufficient, and feels that people in the countryside can weather the worst effects of the crisis better than in the cities. I ask him whether he thinks this might make people migrate to rural areas. “It’s already happening,” he says. “People are returning to their villages from the big cities.”

It’s an interesting fact of the Greek crisis that traditional migration patterns are being reversed. In times of economic hardship people generally move to cities in the hope of finding work. In Greece, it seems, the opposite is true. Life is hard for people here, but the mass unemployment and the inability to cover life’s basic necessities experienced in the cities is noticeably absent here.

“The way I see things, overall it might be best to leave the eurozone and go back to the drachma,” Michelakis concludes. Why? I ask. “It’s the only way they’ll leave us alone,” he replies.

His brother Nektarious, a farmer and shepherd, is just as blunt. “I voted No because both the Greek government and eurozone are taking advantage of the Greek people. They want to take advantage of Greece — and especially Crete, because of our geographical position. That was why Germany wanted to occupy the country, and especially Crete, during World War II, and that’s why they want to occupy us economically now.”

“They want our natural resources,” he continues. “The natural gas that exists on the south of the Island and the minerals — they want us as a trading crossroads. Merkel is aspiring to do pretty much what Hitler tried to do: to reach Asia Minor and Africa on an economic level. That’s why she wants to crush the country.”

Next up is Stefanos Papadakis. He also speaks with what I have come to understand is typical Cretan honesty. “I voted No, because if we keep on saying ‘yes,’ the next thing we will have to do is to lower our pants and get on all fours,” he tells me. And if Merkel were here? “I’d throw her off the Mavros Kolipos cliff.” The Cretan resistance, Georgos tells me, threw traitors off the cliff during the war.

A younger man, not a farmer, has clearly been itching to say something. I ask him for his thoughts. “No matter how hard Germany tried to hide its Nazi past it cannot do so, because it comes out naturally,” he says. “Germans still see themselves as the Aryan race of Europe and all other nations as inferior.” He seems pleased to have got this off his chest.

I ask them about the recent news that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is ready to sign a deal with the creditors. Do they feel he has let them down after the No vote? Yes, they all reply as one. “He should be executed,” says Marinos.

Then the guns arrive. The group shows me their rifles and fire them into the air. Georgos excitedly points to one that he says their grandfather Georgos Seliniotakis used in World War II. “It has killed real Germans,” he says. A man turns up with an automatic machine gun, which he proudly allows me to hold. “There are two things that will never disappear from the Cretan inland,” Georgos tells me. “Food, and guns.”

Marinos concludes the day’s festivities with a final volley of shots: “Don’t worry, Greece will never die,” he tells me. “It will always be Greece.”

This article is part of a series, to read the rest of the series, click here.

David Patrikarakos is the author of “Nuclear Iran: The Birth of an Atomic State,” a Poynter fellow in journalism at Yale University and associate fellow, School of Iranian Studies, at the University of St. Andrews. You can follow him on Twitter at @dpatrikarakos.

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Peter B.

Actually, Schaeubles father died 1st of June in 2000 and worked as tax advisor at last. It’s also know, that he never joined the NSDAP.

Also those NAZI-arguing about germans is same as stupid as saying all greeks ar lazy. If someone don’t have any real matters just go with prejudices.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 8:39 AM CEST

joke

So, you ask few fairly educated people and you make an opinion about crete as a whole? this article is worse than your past one on who destroyed greece. disgrace

Posted on 7/16/15 | 10:22 AM CEST

Thomas Paling

I thought the greeks drank ouzo and the turks raki ! ( although its the same drink its important to get the name right to avoid a faut pas ).

Posted on 7/16/15 | 10:57 AM CEST

BILDico

Is this supposed to be the result of serious investigative journalism?
So Mr. Patrikarakos visited an isolated Cretan village, had a superficial conversation with a few simple, uneducated and strongly opinionated locals and based on this sample he published an article (that doesn’t even have a conclusion) concerning all of the island’s inhabitants. He exploited the hospitality of Cretans to present a caricature of them to an international audience. Totally unethical! No respect for the journalistic values. Well done Mr.Patrikarakos “Poynter fellow in journalism at Yale University “. Maybe you should just focus on lifestyle-related topics instead. Politico is the new Brussels “Hello”….

Posted on 7/16/15 | 12:15 PM CEST

Daphné C.

“If you see a woman on the street don’t call out to her or anything,” he says. “We don’t want any trouble. And you don’t want to have to get married.”
= locals making fun of a journalist to full of himself that he didn’t even get the joke.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 1:50 PM CEST

Manos T.

Very low level of journalism, a true disgrace. The “journalist” asks five random shepherds about the political situation in Greece and tries to generalize their views.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 2:08 PM CEST

Georgios Metaksakis

Very bad article. You can’t ask uneducated people about those thinks. Even if you ask them, ask them also what will do after the exit of eurozone without the money from EU about the olives. And in crete we drink raki, in north greece drink tsipouro but also ouzo. Those 3 are different drinks.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 2:33 PM CEST

Cesare

@Thomas Paling: Yes, ouzo is the most renowned greek superalcoholic drink. But in Crete they drink raki, which is the common name of tsikoudia, the cretan version of tsipouro, also drank a lot in mainland (especially northern) Greece.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 3:06 PM CEST

Alessandro

What a disappointment this site has been. German money goes a long way I guess.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 4:28 PM CEST

Peter

So it’s basically like Texas?

Posted on 7/16/15 | 8:08 PM CEST

john

And this is the crux of the social issue.

As a Canadian professional of Greek ancestry, I agree with the economic reforms that are on the table. Greece needs to modernize its economy. This will impact vested interests, that previous governments were unwilling to confront. Better to nail a retiree making 200/month, then the politically connected.

But, as a person that lost half my father’s family during the occupation, I cringe at the language of negotiation, especially from the German Fin Minister.

First the Bailout is really loans. Germans are taking out loans at 1% and passing them out to the Greeks at 6% (currently $3B in profit…).

When the German Fin Min vetoed a higher corporate tax but insisted on cuts in low end pensions and VAT on fresh food, I was shocked Especially as two of my infant aunts had starvation related deaths during the war…. (my grandfather had a broken leg during one of the bombings, and then died of infection, as all the medication was confiscated, and we didn’t have money to get anything from the black market).

We Canadian’s had to go through our own jarring economic reforms in the ’90s – Two thing saved us – a healthy global economy, a devaluation of the currency and a solid free trade agreement with the U.S.A.

Posted on 7/16/15 | 8:16 PM CEST

Paul C

Oh dear. You could at least get the facts about the Battle of Crete right. There were 28,600 New Zealand, Australian and British troops defending the island, along with a few hundreds or thousands of Greeks who had escaped after the fall of the mainland. Most young Cretan men had been deployed to Epirus, where their mountain skills played a large role in defeating Mussolini’s men, but that meant they weren’t in Crete at the time of the German assault. Cretans did kill a lot of Germans during the invasion but it was conventional British Empire troops that stalled the Nazi takeover for 10 days.
As for 1,000 villages wiped out – well, the Cretans do hyperbole well. There were certainly dozens that were flattened and vicious reprisals were carried out because of the persistent and courageous resistance. the Cretans put up until the end of the war (the Hania garrison held out for several days after Doenitz signed the surrender because they were terrified of handing themselves over to the local population and wanted Allied troops to protect them).
Anyway, it’s good to know that the land that gave us Zeus, Europa, Minos, the Minator, Pasiphae, Ariadne, Daedalus and Icarus, along with the rest, still produces sons who can embroider their heritage for the glory of their race and the entertainment of passing travellers.
As Epimenides once said: “All Cretans are liars, I am a Cretan, do I lie?”

Posted on 7/16/15 | 9:48 PM CEST

Giovanni Costantini

Mr. Patrikarakos,
Either you will learn to cross-check the information you’re gathering on the ground or you do something else for living. This is not fair and respectable journalism. I can certainly say you are too lazy to check historical facts which would make your story look better. You’re too superficial and certainly this is not giving credit to your employer.

Posted on 7/17/15 | 5:41 AM CEST

myrto stavrinou

Really cheap journalism; I am amazed. There is a big proportion of Greek people who realise what the euro and the eurozone mean to this country and who are very grateful for all the support. Europe could do without such articles…

Posted on 7/17/15 | 6:42 AM CEST

Ioannis V.

Have you cross- checked that W. Schaüble’s father was a Nazi killed in the battle of Crete? Personally, as a Greek, I am ashamed when such citations and accusations are reproduced without thorough research. Journalism is first of all an investigative art.

Posted on 7/17/15 | 7:26 PM CEST

Sapiens sapiens

There are countless examples of these same farmers and pastoralists, who the author presents in such a brutish fashion, hosting the very same german soldiers who they fought. Hosting, IN THEIR HOMES, year after year. I have personally met many. So this “journalist” seeks out a few assholes and decides that capture the character of a whole island nation? Despicable, unethical, and garbage journalism.
Forgiving is not the same as forgetting. I call a massive “unfair” on this article.

Journalism 101 piece? I’d give it a fail. So many errors. I hope David Patrikarakos will try harder next time he writes about Greece.

Posted on 7/17/15 | 11:33 PM CEST

Socratis

Wonderful piece of ‘shitstorm’ type journalism. My father Gerasimo, who fought against the Germans, would turn in his grave. A firm όχι to this one, its author and the publisher.

Posted on 7/18/15 | 2:25 AM CEST

Andreas

As a Cretan I really take exception to this article. This is National Enquirer standard journalism. Shame on you. Politico informs public opinion. I was looking forward to a proper analysis of why Crete overwhelming voted No on the pseudo referendum. For those that don’t know, Crete is a rich island, much richer than the rest of Greece. Wealthy from tourism and agriculture. But it wasn’t always so. Till the mid 70s most villages had no running water or electricity. Kids ran around barefooted and homes had no indoor toilets and most had beaten earth floors. After we joined the common market in 81 Greece and Crete in particular benefitted enormously from farm subsidies and structural development funds generously provided by the EU. Waste and abuse of the system were rife. So now, Crete that benefitted enormously from all this generosity are anti German. Why? Cause they’ve grown lazy sitting on their asses (we have he highest rate of childhood obesity in Europe) and use foreign workers to pick our olives. As for hating Germans that’s rubbish. Millions of German tourists visit Crete every year spending their money and no one resents them. So what explains the high rate of No? You’ll have to search far deeper to find an answer That makes any sense.when will we grow up as an island and a nation, stop blaming others for our mistakes l, recognize the need for reform and learn to stand on our own two feet. Now that would be something to be proud of alongside our great And long history of defiance, resistance, hospitality and honour.

I have lived most of my life in Crete. Your article is pure fiction. I’m amazed that it got published.

Posted on 7/24/15 | 6:21 PM CEST

Lynne W.

Hang on – I lived in a village in Crete for a few years from 1980, pre-EU and I recognise the sentiments expressed in this article. The political characters may be different but the passion appears unabated by time. I don’t deny that these passionate views were held by everyone – I knew other islanders who attended Rethymnon and Athens university who held very different views. I also knew people who privately held long anti-German memories but who publically smiled, dawned, and over charged them – a small but advantageous revenge, they felt. Times may have changed for some, but the Cretans, overall, are a proud nation who do, in my experience, hold long memories. The article may not have been representative of all islanders – and in fairness, he never claimed that to be the case – but it is of some. The same disparity applies over here in Britain – in Wales and my closer neighbour, Cornwall, the majority voted to leave the EU dispite being major beneficiaries of EU project funding, which has transformed some communities. Many share a similar indigenous pride to the Cretan villagers in this article, and not dissimilar views. Pragmatic logic and passionately held emotion are incompatible bedfellows, it seems.

Posted on 2/5/17 | 4:29 PM CEST

Robert Green

I visited Crete in the 1970s and drove up into the mountains with my friends from England. We received a fantastically warm welcome. The sentiments of the proud locals in those conversations so many years ago we’re no different than those laid out in this piece.